We then worked on some shifting drills, passing forward to change the angle of attack, punching through to the opponents triangle point. We then shifted gears and worked on some combination striking into a shift with our Ancient Roman and Greek boxing.

We ended the session with some knife work, empty hands against knife and some Spanish knife work, cutting against the free standing pell, working the jiro and other concepts.

2 rounds shadow boxing
3 rounds focus gloves with Chris
Brian is new so we spent a good long time going over some triking
fundamentals and basics with Chris doing most of the teaching. Since I
am recovering from a nice bout of Thanksgiving influenza, this was a
nice break for me. It also gave Chris the chance to get some coaching
in with a little input.

We worked the straight lead with falling step and straight rear with
shoulder whirl and the lead hook using the same mechanics. He got all
these fairly well and was throwing nice combinations after just a bit
of work on the pads.

Since he was learning so well we dumped some savate on him, working
the lead and rear leg fouette, the chasse and coup de pied bas. Added
to that a healthy dose of footwork.

We ended the session with some time spent on the huge segno I have
drawn on the wall and using it as a guide for attack and defense with
a number of weapons.

2 rounds shadow boxing
8 rounds boxing and kickboxing sparring with some coaching along the way

We worked on some combination throwing as usual in our sparring and after, not enough to land, gotta land bunches! This was also Jeff’s first time using the 4 oz gloves, they take some getting used to if you are using the larger training gloves, different in both attack and defense and so much easier to see what’s going on but definitely more painful.

We then hit on a few combat sambo concepts, first control the outside of your opponents upper arm to open them up for strikes and take downs, single legs, doubles and leg hooks. We then hit one simple throw from the clinch but Jeff is just too damn heavy to use it on…so we need to keep that in mind.

We finished the session with some gladitorial combat, Retarius(trident and net) vs Secutor(gladius and large shield) and Thraex(curved sword or sica and small shield) vs Myrmillo(gladius and large shield)…as always, way too much fun. Really hard to overcome the reach and power of the trident. The equipment of the various armatura really balance things out, more so in real combat ( imagine) than training.

Off to a late start but better late than not at all.
2 rounds shadow boxing warm up
2 rounds focus gloves
6 rounds boxing
The plan was to go light with the sparring today but every rounds got progressively harder (as it almost always does:)) 4 oz gloves and mouthpiece, our only equipment today. I was feeling a biit wrung out by the last round but made it through in survival mode mostly.

Did some work with arm grabs and body control via pushes and pulling, also some work in flowing from punches to elbows and even adding some hammer fists to the mix. Wanted tog et to some grappling and weapon work but ran out of time…on a side note Jeff won the fight he was training for by decision.

Chris and I today…
2 rounds shadowboxing as a warm up.
We then went a little different today with a in depth class on Greek and Roman pugilism. Our main focus today was on a single combination…lead straight palm strike, rear straight punch, lead round blow, rear hammerfist, lead hammer fist, rear hammer fist, lead hammer fist, rear round blow, lead round blow, rear shifting round blow.

After working this in the air and on a punching target (fred the head) we fought three rounds trying to keep the ancient style throughout. Chaotic for sure but really interesting rounds. Definitely got better and felt more of a flow as we progressed through the rounds. Forearms took a real beating which was not something I had anticipated. We have sparred int he ancient style before but not nearly as intensely and with this much technique. Will revisit this again soon since I think we learned some new things tonight.

We ended the session with a little par terre from sambo…an arm crucifix from inside the guard, closed or not. Worked as a great guard break if the guard happened to be closed (which is a no no in sport sambo)

On Thursday 10-29 Cain came out for a training session…
2 rounds shadow boxing
2 rounds focus gloves
3 rounds 3 count cadence drill
2 rounds 3 count sparring drill
1 round footwork partnered drill.
We then took a quick look at the difference between Thai style kicking and savate and on some of the mechanics of the savate kicks with a good amount spent on getting his coup de pied bas up and going with some authority.

Lots of sparring today and lots of work on body mechanics, specifically for the lead hook. Jeff has made some great progress in the last few weeks, just a little more tweaking of his hook and it will be a killer. We also did some more work on elbows this week, looking at different methods and angles. We ended the session with Chris going over a few groundwork techniques with us. Been real lazy about grappling, gotta get into it more in the coming weeks.

After our very comprehensive striking session got into even more strikes…elbows from hell today. We first looked at using the segno as a guide for the various strikes using the elbows/ We then applied Dempsey’s mechanics to the elbow strikes employing bother his shoulder whirl and falling step.